The present invention relates to an item of hardware adapted to be bonded to a substrate and, once bonded, to perform a useful mechanical function.
In many modern vehicles, various items are adhesively bonded to the vehicle windows, which are, typically, made of flat or shaped sheets of glass. Various methods of applying adhesive onto the item to be bonded or onto a predetermined location on the glass, have been utilized, with varying degrees of success. Many such methods involve the manual application of the adhesive materials, with the attendant problems of any repetitive manual manufacturing operation. Additionally, the labor costs of such manual operations have become unacceptably high in at least some applications.
More recently, automated methods of applying adhesive materials have been utilized. The precision and reliability of such automated systems has reached the point that they can reasonably be utilized to rapidly apply quite small amounts of adhesive in a small area for the purpose of, for example, bonding an item of hardware onto the glass sheet of a vehicle window assembly. Notwithstanding the improvements made in automated adhesive application systems, they are still not perfect, and it would be desirable to have an item of hardware which can compensate for certain deficiencies in the application systems.
Items of hardware to be adhesively bonded to glass substrates and methods of doing same have been described in the patent literature, for example:
U.S. Pat. No. 4,167,259 describes a device adapted to be adhesively secured to a primary work surface to facilitate the securement of a secondary work piece to said primary work surface. Heat and pressure are required to bond the device to the work surface.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,853,895, 6,068,719, 6,319,344, 6,846,039 and 7,332,225, all related patents, describe a bonded vehicular glass assembly utilizing a two-component urethane adhesive to attach an attachment member to a glass panel to form a joint suitable for use on a vehicle. The attachment member may be a hinge, a latch or the like. Related methods of forming a joint and of attaching components to vehicular glass assemblies by use of the adhesives are also described.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,551,197, 5,704,173, 5,966,874, 6,188,860, 6,298,606, 6,871,450, and 7,360,338, all related patents, describe a flush-mounted articulated window assembly for use in a vehicle. The window assembly includes a transparent sheet with at least one window-mounting member bonded by two separate adhesives to an inner surface of the sheet. The mounting member includes projections which space the mounting member from the inner sheet surface, and/or perforations which allow air and moisture to reach the space provided between the mounting member and the inner sheet surface.